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Thursday, November 18, 2010

Beaded Turkeys

I enjoyed making my Beaded Spiders for Halloween so much that though I am by no means a beader, I perused the bead section of my local Michael's (exactly 1.5 miles from my house and like unto a second home to me) to see if any inspiration felt like knocking on the door of my brain. And it did! All bought on sale for 50% off, these four bead strands...

...turned into a flock of these!

And you'll notice that some gold wire is pictured in the first photograph. That is because I thought I would be using wire. Alas. After a good solid go at it though, the picture in my head just would not be achieved when wire was involved. We had an ugly wiry mess. So I nixed the wire completely in favor of my trusty glue gun. Triumph! This little turkey is like my Pinocchio- I can just hear him singing, "I've got no strings to tie me down..."! :)

For Tom the Turkey's head and body, I glued two sizes of brown glass pearls to each other, the bottom pearl with its holes on the top and bottom, and the top pearl with its hole pointing out. This way their holes would get covered up by other beads.

I hot-glued a yellow "beak" bead over the hole on the front of the face (doesn't it look like he's squawking with an open mouth??) and the wiggly-shaped red bead next to it for the dangly red thing they have on their faces.

Using the same yellow beads as for the beak, I glued two underneath the body bead, for Tom's feet.

For the tail, I glued five red beads together with their holes touching.

Then I glued it to the back of the large brown bead.

And that was it! Once I figured out what to do, it took maybe two minutes per turkey to complete. And crafts like THAT are something we can all be thankful for! :)

I made these thinking I would use them to decorate napkin rings, but plans have changed and since I won't be hosting Thanksgiving dinner anymore, it's a good thing these little cuties are so versatile! They perch well on a mantel,

make a fun Christmas ornament,

and look great on your lapel when you glue them to a pin-back!

Annalise took a two and a half hour nap yesterday (unprecedented!) which allowed me to make these. Just another thing to remember to be grateful for. :)

Oh my goodness, adorable! So cute. I love that little turkey guy! Thanks for sharing!I hope you can join my giveaway going on now, too! Have a great weekend.http://alittleknickknack.blogspot.com/2010/11/giveaway-with-where-grass-is-greener.html